When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969 and signalled back a view of earth from the moon’s perspective, we saw earth for the first time in a way we had never imagined—a small, vulnerable planet suspended alone in what appeared to be the vacuum of empty space. It made our world, and us, feel small and vulnerable, but the vision of our living planet, bright in the reflected light of the sun and blanketed in its protective atmosphere, its landmasses and seas just visible, also made us realize how precious it is. As the years passed, our sense of earth’s smallness and the interconnectivity and interdependence of our lives upon it was reinforced by new technologies and transport. When, in 2020, the apparent bite of a single bat in a city in China that no one outside China had ever heard of led to a global pandemic that threatened the lives and economic well-being of every person on earth, we were reminded still more forcefully that we live in a world of Zero Distance, and of the vulnerability of our entangled lives. We were also reminded that we had in place no global response to this global crisis, and what that cost us.

The response to Covid-19 was fragmented and acrimonious. There was a failure of transparency, cooperation, and trust. Individual nations showed themselves to be unprepared, and many then took hasty, unilateral action intended to benefit themselves without consulting even allies. The Trump government, with its strident “America first!” policies, performed most badly in terms of any meaningful international cooperation (and any effective domestic response), thus making the situation worse for everyone. And Western democratic governments could not rely on their citizens to take recommended collective action in the face of the crisis. The virus got out of control, and millions died.

I remarked at the very beginning of this book that the most serious problems facing all nations today are global problems requiring a cooperative global response. Many are existential problems that, if not addressed, will result in global disaster and perhaps human extinction. Consequences of the disastrous inaction and lack of cooperation in response to Covid are a harbinger of far worse consequences if similar inaction and failure to cooperate typify the global community’s response to climate change, mass migration, nuclear war, etc. I believe these failures force us to realize there is, at the moment, no such thing as a “global community.”

Our leaders speak all the time of a “global, or world order,” but these words take their meaning from a paradigm that sees every nation as a separate, sovereign entity, one among a collection of separate nations, each isolated by its own boundaries, and relating through forces of conflict, confrontation, and competition, responsible only to their own interests. This is a Newtonian paradigm derived from Greek logic and monotheism, and in the Newtonian world that exists today, a “world order” refers to a large group of nations dominated by one great superpower that ultimately aspires to dominate the entire globe. Thus when President Biden promises to restore the “Western world order,” he means a world dominated by American power and American values, and his real aspiration is that this Western world order becomes the world order, or at least a world order dominated by the American-led Western world. This, of course, would be unacceptable to Russia and China, and ultimately invite armed conflict, with China in particular. That is simply not a survivable possibility.

Just as China’s one-party model for national governance offers an alternative to the democratic model, China’s President Xi Jin Ping has offered an alternative model for global governance. For the past two or three years, nearly every one of his foreign policy speeches has promoted the vision of new global order that world be a cooperative, multipolar “community of shared futures.” Many Western leaders have questioned his sincerity, suggesting Xi’s vision is just a cynical cover for China intending its own global dominance. Some American journalists have suggested that China’s ancient “All Under Heaven” philosophy is proof of this, rendering their own cynical interpretation of those words as meaning that China aspires to displace America as the world’s greatest superpower, and rule all nations on earth. I cannot judge the sincerity of Xi’s vision, but his words are a perfect headline for how I see a “quantum global order,” and the true origin and meaning of China’s “All Under Heaven” political philosophy lend credence to the possibility he might actually mean them.

“A Community of Shared Futures”

During the reign of China’s first historically recorded dynasty, the Shang (1600–1046 BCE), the Zhou tribe who ruled one small state miraculously managed to defeat the combined armies of many larger states, and the King of Zhou found himself ruling over most of what was then China’s entire geographical area. But there were constant uprisings and rebellions against him. The Zhou realized they were not strong enough to maintain their position by force, so the king conceived the entirely new Tianxia (“All Under Heaven”) governing model. Instead of ruling by forceful domination, the Zhou would now position themselves as now among a vast network of cooperating states. All member states of this network would find it more in their own interest to cooperate with each other and the Zhou than to seek dominance for themselves. This multi-state network occupied all of what was then the whole known world, so Tianxia was the first model for global governance. In quantum terms, this represents a paradigm shift from every nation or element seen as separate from every other nation or element, connected only by forces of opposition and control that are meant to manipulate the Other, to a paradigm of nations or elements connected through beneficial relationships that work together to grow something larger than the sum of their parts.Footnote 1

Tianxia was the origin of China’s long preference for win/win solutions, and of Xi Jin Ping’s own multilateralism. It is also the earliest known precursor of what I call a quantum global order. The underlying building block of quantum reality, the quantum wave function, is a superposition of multiple possibilities. A dominant theme in the new quantum thinking and worldview is the celebration of multiplicity and diversity. We have also seen that one of the primary strengths of the RenDanHeyi management model is its embodiment of multiplicity and diversity in organizational structures. A quantum organization, being a coordinated network of multiple micro-teams or microenterprises can explore many options or strategies simultaneously, thus giving it many “fingers into the future.” Companies implementing a RenDanHeyi structure have an enormous innovative advantage. A quantum global order would mirror these; no longer the domination of “the greatest and the best,” but a cooperative network enjoying the co-creative benefits of many centers of excellence.

If all nations or big power blocks in the world find it more advantageous to cooperate and strive to co-create a mutually beneficial future, then none will seek to be the dominant power. There would be no further need for conflict or war. As Xi Jin Ping expressed his call for a global “community of shared futures” in a November 2020 speech,

As an old Chinese saying goes, ‘Men of insight see the trend, while men of wisdom ride it.’ Humanity lives in a global village where the interests and destinies of all countries are intertwined. People across the world have increasingly yearned for a better life. The trend toward peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit is unstoppable. History has proven and will continue to prove that good-neighborliness will prevail over a beggar-thy-neighbor approach, mutually beneficial cooperation will replace zero-sum game, and multilateralism will beat unilateralism.Footnote 2

Yes, China would gain from such multilateral cooperation, but so would everyone else.

The Tianxia governance model and philosophy underpins the development of China’s ambitious, international Belt and Road infrastructure project, and something very similar is the model of governance used in founding the European Union. Both are precursors of a Quantum Global Order implemented by a RenDanHeyi management model. Just as in Haier’s RenDanHeyii implementation of Quantum Management for companies, in both Belt and Road and the European Union, each participating nation retains its national sovereignty, governing itself in its own self-organizing way according to its own governing model, while cooperating with all others in the collective ecosystem. No nation needs to adopt a “one best size fits all.”

At Haier, the central operational system required to provide a shared sense of direction and necessary resources is provided by senior management and a network of service platforms. For Belt and Road, China is providing the impetus and international connecting links that join up all national infrastructure projects and, where needed, the financial resources required for each participating nation’s national projects. And in the European Union, the Brussels bureaucracy and institutions like the European Central Bank, European Commission, and European Court of Justice provide the central operational system. For a Quantum Global Order to be successful, all nations or big power blocs would have to devise something like Brussels on a global scale. Global institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, and UNESCO already exist to provide international service platforms, and others could be established as required. The main challenge standing in the way of a Quantum Global Order is whether Western nations, particularly America, can adopt the quantum paradigm and reinvent their “one best way for all,” Newtonian mindset.

We nations of the world are at an existential crisis point. As Abraham Lincoln said on the fields of Gettysburg, “United we stand. Divided we fall.” The reality of our fragile and interconnected twenty-first-century world is a quantum reality, a reality that Newtonian physics misunderstood and wrongly described. Newtonian atoms and Newtonian superpowers are misconceptions. They are dangerous, outdated delusions. Realizing we are “quantum societies” who can live together only in a “quantum global order” is not an aspirational ideal. It is a cosmological truth and a fact of Nature—an existential necessity.